# Platform Engineering Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE)

**Company:** [OpenAI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/openai)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA, New York, NY, California
**Role:** Engineering Management
**Salary:** $302k – $335k/yr
**Experience:** 8+ years
**Skills:** Software Engineering, Architecture, Product Shaping, Refactoring, Observability, Enterprise Software, Code Quality, Testing, Security, Governance
**Posted:** 2026-02-23

> Leads a small Platform FDE team to amplify customer ideas into scalable platform features through hands-on engineering, architecture, and product work. Requires 8+ years engineering experience including 2+ years management, strong judgment, and cross-functional collaboration.

## Job Description

## In this role you will
- **Guide a focused portfolio of platform bets**: Steer direction for a small number of high-signal problems, with clear hypotheses, success criteria, sequencing, and measurable adoption outcomes.
- **Build and validate with customers**: Ensure the team ships working software with design partners, instruments usage and outcomes, and iterates quickly based on real-world adoption and constraints.
- **Co-develop with long-term owners**: Partner early with B2B Platform (and other durable owners) to align on architecture, interfaces, security/governance requirements, and handoff criteria, staying engaged through validation and the path to scale.
- **Maintain a high engineering bar**: Set and enforce standards for design, code quality, testing, observability, and operational readiness appropriate for enterprise use.
- **Grow and develop the team**: Coach and develop engineers through direct feedback, clear expectations, and durable team mechanisms that reinforce execution and ownership.
- **Operate with high judgment and influence**: Make clear tradeoffs under ambiguity, communicate decisions crisply across stakeholders, and drive outcomes through partnership rather than formal authority.

## You might thrive in this role if you
- Bring **8+ years of engineering experience**, including 2+ years managing high-performance engineers
- Are **deeply customer-obsessed** and can partner credibly with senior stakeholders while keeping a high bar for delivery and technical rigor.
- **Naturally act as a shepherd**: you elevate and refine others’ ideas, sharpen hypotheses, and make disciplined “scale vs pause” calls with clear reasoning.
- **Excel at cross-functional execution**, forming tight partnerships with engineering, product, research, and GTM teams to deliver outcomes without needing formal authority.
- **Can build inclusive team mechanics** – rotations, mentorship, and scoped ownership – that increase collaboration across teams rather than creating a gated platform group.

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